Director Katharina Thoma sets Richard Strauss’s comedy in a country house in the South Downs (a surrogate for Glyndebourne), immediately before and during the Second World War. Hofmannsthals’ conceit – that a hapless young composer has to accept the simultaneous performance of his new tragic opera with a burlesque from a commedia dell’arte troupe - is turned into a touching wartime drama of nurses, invalids, airmen – and of painful delusions and soul-searching, before final happiness.

Cast:
- Ariadne: Soile Isokoski
- Composer: Kate Lindsey
- Zerbinetta: Laura Claycomb
- Bacchus: Sergey Skorokhodov
- Music Master: Thomas Allen

Director: Katharina Thoma

Recorded live at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Lewes, March 2013

"Everything fits superbly and the production captures the fragility of happiness and the undertow of melancholy better than any I can remember." - The Evening Standard

"Conductor Vladimir Jurowski ends his 13-year reign as music director by drawing sumptuous Straussian playing from the London Philharmonic Orchestra. In 40 years of watching Ariadne, the opera has never moved me more." - The Daily Mail

"...a terrific evening of onstage entertainment and a thought-provoking take on a work that is 100 years young. For any Strauss lover ... an absolute must." - www.MuscialCriticism.com

Running time: 128 minutes
Subtitles: EN/FR/DE/KO
Sound format: 2.0LPCM + 5.1(5.0) DTS